Joey King

While filming her role as the animated China Girl in "Oz the Great and Powerful" (2013), Joey King spent most of the time reading lines from a phone-booth-sized box while her co-stars performed opposi...
Read More...

It's easy to get swept up with major Hollywood stars this time of year, gazing at the red carpet and thinking of these celebs as superhuman megastars, but even the biggest names around got their starts in less glamorous ways. Before their Oscars and Emmys, these stars had Pop Tarts and Lisa Frank.
1. Ben Affleck
Dig those smooth moves and that hip phone! The two-time Oscar winner starred in this Burger King commercial before becoming the megastar we know today from films like Good Will Hunting and Gone Girl. His next role may be playing Batman, but now we'll always think of him as this bad boy who breaks the rules.
2. Brad Pitt
It may be crazy to see a superstar like Brad Pitt shelling for potato chips, but if you think about it, not much has really changed for the Oscar-winning Fight Club star since this Pringles commercial: he still looks good enough to make our mouths water.
3. Jennifer Lawrence
Since starring in this commercial for MTV's Super Sweet 16, Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence has taught those boys how to properly carry her around on her throne, where this Oscar-winning actress belongs.
4. Stanley Tucci
We've always loved The Devil Wears Prada's Stanley Tucci, but seeing him young and hunky in this Levi's commercial made us love him even more.
5. Steve Carell
Steve Carell may have received his first Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in Foxcatcher, but this commercial shows that he's at his best when he's being funny and lovable.
6. Leonardo DiCaprio
We're like 97% sure we'd take our pants off immediately if Leo came up to us now and told us to "keep it poppin" or to "save some for Daddy." The 5-time Academy Award nominee is underrated even when it comes to his commercials.
7. Haley Joel Osment
We're just gonna throw this out there: The Sixth Sense could have been a much better movie if they'd stuck to the original line, "I see snack dragons." Just saying. Also, not even a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle would eat a pizza that looks that gross, Kraft.
8. Naomi Watts
Young Naomi Watts, the two-time Academy Award nominee you know from films like Birdman and Mulholland Drive, was once a teenager with a thick Australian accent. Like most of us, the near-perfect actress worried about her skin, her figure, and "that one" problem we don't talk about.
9. Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone
"You sound like a commercial." "You buyin' it?" This is the greatest moment of either of their careers. Just kidding, Sharon Stone has gone on to many other performances that are just as good, if not better.
10. Mila Kunis
So, we guess we can thank Mila Kunis for helping make Lisa Frank such a thing in the 90s. It's hard to believe that the star was only two years away from her breakout role on That '70s Show.
11. Elijah Wood:
We've always had a lot of love for Elijah Wood's facial expressions. From Lord of the Rings to Wilfred, his face is sometimes the only thing that makes his performances entertaining. This commercial might just be his shining moment.
12. Kristen Stewart
We love how sassy Kristen Stewart is in this Porsche commercial -- that head nod and "duh" look on her face, as if she would lie about missing her bus, Dad. But secretly, she's all *Live Fast, Die Hard, Bad Girls, Do It Well* #YOLO. Performance of her career, honestly.
13. Meg Ryan
We would personally rather watch a never-ending loop of Meg Ryan's face appearing over the Burger King logo than watch Sleepless in Seattle.
14. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
How many times have we fantasized about the chance to be at Joseph Gordon Levitt's house with him making us breakfast in the morning? Countless. But we never imagined it could be as adorable and delicious as this 1991 Pop Tarts commercial makes it seem.
15. Tobey Maguire
Yo, Spider-Man is having an uncomfortable amount of fun in the bathroom.
16. Corey Feldman
This adorable McDonalds commercial from 1975 may have been heartwarming back then, but 40 years later, it just reminds us how much The Goonies star hasn't aged since he was 4.
17. Demi Moore
We're not sure if the Ghost star was trying to sell Diet Coke by convincing us we might fall in love, or if she was trying to warn us of the dangers and health problems that could arise from drinking it, but we still like it.
18. Keanu Reeves:
Eating cereal has seriously never looked more fun than it does in this commercial. We would love to eat Kelloggs Corn Flakes with Keanu, Matrix style.
19. Stephen Colbert
This ad seems like a news report, and we can totally see a lot of similarities between this FirsTier Bank commercial and The Colbert Report.
20. Matt LeBlanc
Okay, the best things might come to those who wait, but does the Friends star now have to run back up to the roof, or is he just gonna waste that whole bottle of ketchup just to look cool eating one hot dog? Joey. Doesn't. Waste. Food.
21. Courteney Cox
Fun fact: the Friends star was the first person to ever say "period" (referring to menstruation, not punctuation) on TV. She then broke down more boundaries by starring in terribly-named-but-not-actually-terrible TV shows, like Cougar Town.
22. Elisabeth Moss
Are we the only ones watching this commercial as if we're watching Pegy pitch an ad campaign on Mad Men? We can't be.
23. Sarah Michelle Gellar
This 4-year-old Sarah Michelle Gellar just slayed Burger King's competition faster than you could say "Buffy." Un-be-liev-able!
24. Bryan Cranston
Fans were amazed with how Bryan Cranston transformed from the lovable Hal on Malcolm in the Middle into the meth kingpin Heisenberg on Breaking Bad, but the truly incredible transformation of his career happened way earlier. The way he instantly goes from being a skunk to a human is absolutely astonishing.
25. Aaron Paul
This commercial seems like it could actually just be Breaking Bad's Jesse Pinkman waiting to eat his breakfast before heading off to Chemistry with Mr. White, doesn't it? Aaron Paul's gotta have his Pops, bitch!
26. Megan Mullally and John Goodman
We love Karen Walker enough to be able to recognize that incredible voice anywhere, even if it's some place strange, like a McDonalds commercial. While Karen would certainly never actually sell Egg McMuffins, we're pretty sure that Roseanne star John Goodman totally would.
27. Seth Green
We don't mean to diminish the abilities of our favorite werewolf from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or our favorite dimwitted cartoon son from Family Guy, but this is definitely Seth Green's brightest moment. That hair, the accent. He totally nails the 90s goon role with lines like, "Consequently, we can hit on 'em," and "Definitely - NOT!"
28. Tony Hale
Tony Hale won our hearts playing Buster on Arrested Development (and an Emmy playing Gary on Veep), and this commercial proves that he's made a career out of his hilarious concern regarding women's toiletries. We wonder if Gary's Leviathan on Veep has Herbal Essences.
29. Charlie Day
This quirky commercial for Cascade dishwasher detergent looks like Charlie Day just stepped out of an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Graduating and heading straight into retirement also seems like a total Charlie Kelly scheme, doesn't it?
30. Jane Lynch
Okay, the only thing we love more than Frosted Flakes and Tony the Tiger is this commercial with Glee star Jane Lynch camping out everyday trying to sneak a peak at the elusive mascot himself.

Meat Loaf's rocker daughter Pearl Aday and her partner, Anthrax star Scott Ian, have formed a new supergroup with members of The Cult and Armored Saint. Ian debuted Motor Sister at the couple's home as part of his 50th birthday celebrations in December, 2013, and the band, featuring The Cult drummer John Tempesta and Armored Saint bassist Joey Vera has since recorded a debut album, titled Ride, which will be released in March (15).
The Anthrax rocker tells Radio.com, "My birthday present to myself was, I cherry picked my 12 favourite Mother Superior songs, I put a band together, and we played a concert in the jam room in my house for, like, 20 of our friends, who are really into Mother Superior. The vibe in the room was so good. It was me, Jim Wilson, Pearl, John Tempesta on drums and Joey Vera on bass. We crushed it."
He adds, "Long story short, (Joey's wife) Tracy Vera is at work the next day - she's the vice president of Metal Blade Records - and (president) Mike Faley walks in and says, 'I heard about this gig at Scott's house last night... Are they gonna do anything with that?' And she said, 'I don't know, I'll call Scott'.
"So she called and asked me, 'Do you want to do anything with this, because Metal Blade would sign it! It would be my project'... Two weeks later, we went into the studio... and made the record in two days. It f**king rocks!"
Motor Sister's first public performance will take place at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn, New York next month (12Feb15).

Richard Linklater's acclaimed movie Boyhood has landed four nominations for the 2014 Gotham Independent Film Awards including a Best Feature nod. The drama, which took the director 12 years to complete and stars Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette will compete against Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Love is Strange and Under The Skin in the top category.
Hawke has also scored a Best Actor nomination for his role in the film, alongside Bill Hader for The Skeleton Twins, A Most Violent Year's Oscar Isaac, Michael Keaton for Birdman and Miles Teller for Whiplash, while Arquette is up against Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beyond the Lights), Julianne Moore (Still Alice), Under the Skin's Scarlett Johansson and Mia Wasikowska (Tracks) in the Best Actress category.
Nightcrawler's Riz Ahmed, Blue Ruin's Macon Blair, Boyhood's Ellar Coltrane, Wish I Was Here's Joey King, Obvious Child's Jenny Slate and Dear White People's Tessa Thompson will battle it out for Breakthrough Actor.
The prizegiving ceremony will take place at Cipriani Wall Street in New York on 1 December (14). Actress Tilda Swinton and Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller with be honoured with special tributes at the event.

Slipknot's mystery new drummer had to pay his respects to late bassist Paul Gray before he was welcomed into the masked rock act. Percussionist Shawn Crahan tells Rolling Stone magazine he took his new bandmate, rumoured to be Jay Weinberg, to Gray's grave in a Des Moines, Iowa cemetery.
He explains, "I made him pay his respects and say hello. I told him what we're gonna do, and we got on a f**king plane and flew to f**king L.A."
The new drummer replaces former Slipknot star Joey Jordison.
Crahan and his bandmates insist they'll never reveal the identity of their new drummer.

Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has broken his silence about the firing of drummer Joey Jordison, revealing the decision to let him go was one of the toughest he and his bandmates have ever had to make. Jordison and the heavy rockers parted ways in December (13), 18 years after he joined the group, but neither he nor Taylor and company have discussed the break-up in detail until now.
The frontman tells Metal Hammer magazine, "I can't talk too much about it because we're going through the legalities of everything right now and settling everything, but it's when a relationship hits that T-section and one person's going one way and you're going the other. And try as you might to either get them to go your way or try and go their way, at some point you've got to go in the direction that works for you.
"This is me speaking in the broadest terms, with respect to Joey. I guess to sum it up, it was one of the hardest decisions we ever made.
"We're all happy right now and we hope that he is. I've known him since '91, and that was before we were in bands together, and he's incredibly talented; he's just in a place in his life, right now, that's not where we are... in the nicest terms."
Taylor admits he no longer has a relationship with his former drummer, adding, "I haven't talked to Joey in a while, to be honest... It's not because I don't love him and I don't miss him. And it is painful; we talk about him all the time, but at the same time, do we miss him or do we miss the old him? That's what it really comes down to. It's just a f**king shame."
Reports suggest Jordison has been replaced by Jay Weinberg, the son of longtime Bruce Springsteen drummer Max Weinberg, as Slipknot prepare to release their fifth studio album 5: The Gray Chapter next month (Oct14).

Focus Features via Everett Collection
Zach Braff is a funny guy. He can sell a joke (or, even more triumphantly, a reactionary take) with genuine comic chops. That's what makes the first half of Wish I Was Here so watchable — pleasant to the point that we might even expect it to carry forth successfully into the later acts. But beyond Braff's dry rejoinders and quirky stammers is something deliberately less impressive: his stab at the dramatic.
Braff falters in the realm of the serious not as an actor — at least not predominantly — but as a writer and director. Wish I Was Here sets up a story loaded with the potential for sharp pangs. Braff plays Aiden Bloom, a man with an unhappy wife (Kate Hudson), a dying father (Mandy Patinkin), a lonesome daughter (Joey King), a disgruntled manchild brother (Josh Gad), and a crumbling dream (acting). Each construct is set up with relative validity, but none really hits home in a way that rings remotely authentic.
Focus Features via Everett Collection
The reason for this is, ultimately, because Wish I Was Here doesn't seem particularly concerned with what it says. It tosses around emotional maxims to tie father to son and wife to husband when convenient, digging up contrivances about ice cream, swear jars, and surfing memories that have no real bearing beyond the benefits of a momentary poetic aesthetic. More worried about how it sounds and looks than any of the messages it propagates, Wish I Was Here tends to contradict itself — Braff and Hudson both seek happiness, but only the former is granted a real relationship (or any screentime) with their children — or fall short of painting its picture. While brother Noah (Gad) is sold as a major piece of the Bloom family's fractured puzzle, we never get the chance to learn anything about him beyond a few points of biographical trivia.
Still, the movie isn't entirely unbearable. As said, Braff can handle a comedic moment with aplomb. His daughter, played by King, is masterfully charming. The saving grace of Wish I Was Here is that the vast majority of its attention is on these two and their relationship. But when we stray elsewhere, it's as if the movie is doing everything it can to pad its runtime with ostensibly deep ideas. Ideas about childhood fantasies, science-fiction, paternal disappointment, Jewish scripture, punching people, and Comic-Con. None of it packs anything beneath the surface, so we can't help but groan and wonder why it was put there in the first place. Just get back to Braff and King bickering comedically.
2.5/5
Follow @Michael Arbeiter | Follow @Hollywood_com

Focus Features
I expected quite a few things from Zach Braff's long-buffered Garden State follow-up Wish I Was Here: a brooding template, quirky imagery, Shins music. But I did not expect consistent, detailed conversations about Jewish law and scripture. Sure, Garden State included nods to the religion and culture (with which Braff was raised) but hardly to the degree that we see in Wish I Was Here. From the very first scene, in which Braff's character's daughter Grace (played by Joey King, a highlight in the flick) cites her rabbi's admonition of foul language, we're embedded in a distinctly Jewish atmosphere — one that, at times, gets so specific that I wondered what the experience of watching such a film might be for someone who didn't grow up with the religion, like I did.
Full scenes revolve around the practices of Grace's adherence to the religion, without much exposition as to what we're seeing. Braff chauffers his viewers through the sequences poking fun at or offering affectionate nods to the particulars of Yeshiva academia with a "Get it?" or "Remember that?" attitude, insinuating a familiarity that the majority of his audience — if even close to a direct ratio of the population in large — probably won't have.
Movies about Christianity have the luxury of going specific — no matter what religion you subscribe to, if you grew up in the Western World you more than likely know the basic gist of what goes on in church. But when it comes to Judaism, direct depictions can feel esoteric.
It's not as though Braff is the only director to venture the illustration of Jewish religion and culture in a mainstream movie (as "indie" as Braff's persona is, he's still well-known enough for his work to garner public attention). We think immediately of Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, two directors who have frequently colored their movies with a Jewish context. The difference, however, between the Allen/Brooks methods (which are, furthermore, very different from one another) and that of Braff is that you're more likely to see Allen take a jab at nebbishy stereotypes or Brooks make a crass crack about circumcisions than you are to see either delve into the particulars of the day-to-day at a Yeshiva school.
Focus Features via Everett Collection
A recent film that drove us fairly deep into Jewish education is A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers dark comedy that centers around a physics professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his son's disciplinary tribulations at Hebrew school. While the Coen Brothers dabble quite frequently in the fringes of our world, we're not surprised to see them deliver such a vivid portrait of Judaism in the Midwest. In fact, A Serious Man devotes itself to the idea that Stuhlbarg's family is stamped with an "outsider" label,
But Braff adheres to no such idea, which is at once puzzling and quite gratifying. With the exception of a single one-off joke from a gentile neighbor boy, Judaism is never meant to feel like anything but "the norm." We're invited into the film through the Bloom family, and as such are welcomed into their customs, which are treated with the same engagement, familiarity, and normative mentality with which any Martin Scorsese film would treat Catholicism.
It's an interesting, and impressive, move by Braff. Although we've seen Judaism depicted on the screen time and time again, Wish I Was Here is a unique example of a Jewish movie: one that isn't driven by a narrative entrenched in Jewish history but is foremost reverent to the religion; one that treats it not so much like an "outer tier" culture but a central, basic, human practice. As loving as the tributes to Judaism of Allen, Brooks, and the Coens are, they are often inclined to approach the religion as a "something else." But Wish I Was Here just treats it as the something.
Follow @Michael Arbeiter | Follow @Hollywood_com

Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Hellboy star Ron Perlman have joined the cast of the upcoming Stonewall film, which has commenced production in Montreal, Canada.
Roland Emmerich's new movie focuses on the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York, which served as the catalyst for the modern gay rights movement, and will also feature War Horse star Jeremy Irvine, White House Down actor Joey King and Caleb Landry Jones.
The 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots will be remembered at the New York LGBT Pride event in New York at the end of June (14). Demi Lovato has signed up to perform at the Dance on the Pier event on 29 June (14).

White House Down star Joey King has been cast to play a young woman who helps to bring polygamist Mormon leader Warren Jeffs to justice in a TV film. The 14 year old will star in Outlaw Prophet as Elissa Wall, who was forced by Jeffs, the Texas leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to marry her 19-year-old cousin when she was 14.
In 2006, Wall pressed charges against Jeffs and he was subsequently sentenced to serve 10 years to life in prison in Utah for two counts of being an accomplice to rape.
However, he was released by the Utah Supreme Court in 2010 because of incorrect jury instructions, only to be sentenced to life in prison in Texas for two felony counts of child sexual assault in 2011.
Scandal's Tony Goldwyn will play Jeffs.

A trip to the wig store, a masquerade ball, and an appearance by Donald Faison, all set to a song by The Shins? It can only be the teaser trailer for Zach Braff's latest stint in the director's chair, Wish I Was Here. In the film, Braff stars as Aidan Bloom, an actor, husband, and father in his mid 30s who finds himself unable to pay for his children's private school when his father gets sick. He decides to home school them instead, and the results are nothing like what he expected. Wish I Was Here, which was funded entirely via Kickstarter, also stars Kate Hudson, Joey King, Mandy Patinkin, and Josh Gad.
And, like a (d)evolution of his feature debut Garden State, this movie seems like it will pack in enough painfully hip, twee, aggressively artistic, and downright annoying elements to make you stand on an abandoned piece of heavy machinery and scream into a quarry. Here's a roundup of all of these "ughhh" moments that we noticed in the Wish I Was Here trailer.
Opening on a Wall of Wig Heads Okay, we get it, you're artsy. Does this have anything to do with the film?
Affirmations of People Being "Unique and Awesome" Everybody knows that the inspirational message is supposed to come at the end of the trailer, not the beginning. It's film 101!
Carrying Around Money in a Plastic Jug It's annoying and unweildy. The people in line behind you at the store need to get on with their lives.
Everyone's Dressed Like SuperheroesAnd not a single Batman, Spider-Man or Captain America is anywhere to be found.
Soundtrack by The Shins You're just making it easy for people to make fun of you now, Zach Braff. Think outside of the emotionally-driven indie rock box for a change.
Lens Flare If we don't like it when J.J. Abrams does it, we probably won't like it when you do it.
Focus Features/YouTube
Everyone's on Their Phone Are those kids even old enough to own smart phones? And don't they know it's rude to play on your phone when you're supposed to be watching a movie?
Zach Braff, Space Explorer Wait, all of a sudden this is a sci-fi movie now? What happened to the quirky, indie thing you were doing three seconds ago?
Donald Faison Appears Briefly...And everyone wishes they could be re-watching Scrubs instead. Remember the musical episode? Good times.
Glass Breaking, Fire, Screaming in Rapid Succession We're assuming it's some kind of metaphor for inner turmoil.
So. Much. Genre-Bending.There's a period masquerade, a space adventure and a weepy tear-jerker, all in a midlife-crisis indie. How many movies are in this one movie? Is this Braff's attempt to make Inception?
Soft-Lit Suburban Streets Again, we get it, you're artsy. You don't need the fake fireflies to drive the message home. Less is more, Zach Braff.
Follow @hollywood_com
Follow @julesemm

Title

Landed breakthrough role of Ramona Quimby opposite Selena Gomez in "Ramona and Beezus," based on series of novels by Beverly Cleary; also recorded song "Ramona Blue" with sister Kelli King for soundtrack

Made TV acting debut on Disney Channel series "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"

Voiced China Girl in Sam Raimi's adventure fantasy "Oz the Great and Powerful"

Portrayed Channing Tatum's daughter in "White House Down."

Summary

While filming her role as the animated China Girl in "Oz the Great and Powerful" (2013), Joey King spent most of the time reading lines from a phone-booth-sized box while her co-stars performed opposite an elaborate marionette puppet. Thankfully, most of King's other roles have been face-to-face with her big-name co-stars. Throughout her career, King's portrayed everything from the title young adventurer in "Ramona and Beezus" (2010) to an ostracized young girl in the music video for Taylor Swift's "Mean" (2011). King began acting when most other children were headed to preschool, and briefly appeared on the Disney series "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" (2005-08), before being cast in the short film "Grace" (2006). The L.A. native provided the voice of the typically Seussian character of Katie, a strange yellow fur ball, in 2008's "Horton Hears a Who!" before being chosen to portray Beverly Cleary's beloved Ramona Quimby (age 8). King, whose older sisters Kelli and Haley are also actresses, portrayed a young Talia al Ghul in the blockbuster "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), and later went on to play Channing Tatum's daughter in the explosion-filled "White House Down" (2013). As polished and talented as actresses twice her age, Joey King has risen to become one of Hollywood's rising stars.